Awesome Friday: On Star Wars, Then and Now

There are two types of people in the world. Those who prefer Star Trek and those who prefer Star Wars. I’ve always been the former, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love the former. For the the release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story on home video I wrote a piece exploring why maybe I don’t love it as much now as many of the people I know.

Both times there was this immediate rush. Star Wars is good again. What a time to be alive. The interesting thing about watching a movie twice in two days is that everything stands out. The stuff that works and the stuff that doesn’t. There’s a lot of stuff that works about the new Star Wars movies. I love Rey, Finn, and Poe. I love the new locations in Rogue One and the Jedi-less story it tells. I love the tone of the movies, and the effects are some of the best I have ever seen.

I just wish that they didn’t feel exactly the same. There are two George Lucas quotes I have been thinking about lately. The first is from the special features of The Phantom Menace. He’s describing the story of the prequels, how it will have familiar beats as the original trilogy, and he compares them to stanzas in a poem that rhyme. The second is from 2015, right after he’d seen The Force Awakens he was asked what he thought and he replied “I think the fans are going to love it, it’s very much the kind of movie they’ve been looking for.”